You're not a true audiophile unless...

Can anyone else chime in with some of the more ridiculous qualifications people have come up with for calling oneself an "audiophile?"

a) A true audiophile shall only buy things from a guy who put something shoddy together in his garage (to provide true audiophile elusivity). When the shoddy does fall apart, garage guy will be long gone and the true audiophile will have a big paperweight.

b) A true audiophile shall know nothing about setup, acoustics, etc, focus only on optics and it will all sound like crap.

c) A true audiophile shall keep himself very tool/feature deprived in the name of purity and his cluster may sound ok with 3 audiophile recordings on repeat. Play anything else and the naked emperor will be in town full bloom.

d) When a true audiophile’s gear, his lack of common sense, etc keeps him in a state of constant disgruntlement, he shall blame everything on the cable (it’s all the cable’s fault) and keep buying wire for 10k, 20k, etc to fix all his problems.

etc, etc , etc

I could go further on the list and all the way to x, y, z, give you a sum total of 26 true audiophile qualifiers, but you get the idea..

If you say you are one, then you are one.

To me it is about getting the best sounding issue/pressing available of my favorite records without paying for the collector aspect to it. For others that are not among my top 50/100, making sure the pressing sounds very good.

I despise collectors - they purposely drive prices up. When the record manufacturers like Acoustic Sounds, Music Direct, Blue Note, Speakers Corner, etc. come out with reissues I am happy, When they overproduce them and I can get an overstock or great price especially from  a speculator who never opened it hoping for big investment gain, I am really happy (brand new Kind of Blue UHQR 45 for $120 for example a while back on eBay).

Collectors should stick to stamps, coins, art, and beanie babies. Car collectors are OK if they drive them at least a thousand or two miles per year or they are truly art (the multimillion dollar ones that belong in a museum) investments. Cars are meant to be driven and enjoyed.

Being an 'audiophile' has a more negative conotation these days. And I can see why.

In Latin the term Audio is a amalgamation of two words, which basically translates to be able to hear a range of Sounds.

In Greek 'Phile' is from the term for being attracted to.

A Hybrid word used since 1950's until today to describe music that is Broadcast, it is also from a similar Period that High Fidelity was used, both are designed to be used to define a particular area of Marketing Demographic, and the influence is that some want to be labeled such a Type of individual in relation to how they make decisions about a purchase. I sense it gives a purpose to the reasons to spend monies on a means to be entertained using recorded music.